Clown In A Cornfield Dir: Eli Craig (13th Floor Film Review)
What’s more fun than Snakes on A Plane? Why, a Clown In A Cornfield, of course!
Starring: Quinn Maybrook, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Will Sasso
Welcome to Kettle Springs, Missouri, population: a handful of hicks and a couple of city slickers just moved in from Philadelphia.
But other than for the odd occasion of inbreeding, Dr. Maybrook and his teenage daughter Quinn quickly discover that Kettle Springs is no City of Brotherly Love.
The good doctor, played amiably by Aaron Abrams, has had to leave his Philadelphia residency under shady circumstances, but compared to the residents of Kettle Springs, he’s one of the good guys.
Daughter Quinn, played by a very watchable Katie Douglas, is a typical 17-year-old (if there is such a thing and she quickly takes up with “the cool kids” even as she manages to illicit the wrath of her acidic teacher, Mr. Vern. She hooks up…kind of with Cole Hill (Carson MacCormac), son of town oligarch Arthur Hill (Kevin Durand), owner of the now-defunkt Beyan Corn Syrup Company.
But first, a backstory….there’s always a backstory…jump back to 1991 and we find a group of teens in Kettle Springs partying in the old corn syrup factory…this is corn country after all. One thing leads to another, the factory burns down, and a killer clown emerges.
Back to the present day and the clown…or clowns…are still angry and armed with all manner of pitchforks, chainsaws and other implements of destruction. This being a teen slasher movie, Quinn and her friends are prime targets and they start “disappearing” in a predicable fashion…in fact, so predictable that one doomed teen actually predicts her own demise…its as if she had been watching a film of her own life…or death.
Who are these clowns and why are they so angry? That would be telling. But there’s plenty of fun and blood in the 90 minutes it takes to find out.
And the film, based on a novel by Adam Cesare’s novel, actually has something to say…there’s serious (I think) cemmentary mixed in about today’s inter-generational issues, how today’s young uns have been sold out and let down by the previous generations’ greed and narcissism.
Everything is taken to extreme, especially the gratuitous violence…but that’s what we’re here for. Along the way there is plenty to laugh at and even something to think about.
Chances are, Clown In A Cornfield won’t be making a big splash come Oscar season, but you could do worse than spend 90 minutes with Frendo and his friends.
Marty Duda
In Cinemas today! Click here for showtimes and tickets.
